Apple snaps up Australian-made SnappyLabs: Report

Apple could soon be working to let its iPhone users take up to 20 photos per second after it has reportedly purchased SnappyLabs and its photography app SnappyCam.

SnappyCam, which was created by San Francisco-based Australian John Papandriopoulos, improved on the default iPhone phone application by allowing iPhone 5 users to take 8-megapixel quality shots at 20 pictures per second. According to reports, Papandriopoulos rewrote the JPEG codec with a new algorithm for ARM processors with the NEON SIMD extension to allow the iPhone's camera to compress the full 8MP shots in real time. This was four times the amount in the default iPhone 5 camera app, according to SnappyCam.

Users could also turn the photos taken into an animated GIF using the app.

Hopes for an Android version of the app appear to have been dashed after the SnappyCam Pro app, which sold for AU$0.99 on the iTunes store, was removed from the store over the weekend, amid speculation that the company had been purchased by Apple.